Rat meat: it's what's for dinner

We all know starving artists will eat just about anything, but did you know that for some that includes rodent?

Artist Laura Ginn displayed her latest piece of art in Manhattan's Lower East Side Wednesday: a feast featuring one of New York City's most abundant creatures--the rat.

According to the New York Observer, the five course meal Chef Yuri Hart cooked up was nothing like Roadkill Stew. It included a goat cheese crostini with a small piece of rat meat and a shot glass of gazpacho, two circles of rat and pork terrine over a deconstructed salad. Also featured was "Rat Two Ways"--braised rat and a roasted half rat over a sweet corn salad -- a rat-free lemon sorbet garnished with an edible flower, and finally, French toast topped with a slice of crispy rat jerky (head, claws, and all).

The piece, entitled “Tomorrow We Will Feast Again on What We Catch,” explores the idea of self-sustainability and the multitude of processes which we go through to get our food. It also required guests to pony up $100 and sign a liability waiver just in case the rat did not sit too well with anyone.

But there was no need to worry about the rats' cleanliness. They come from a lab facility in California. Ginn told the New York Observer that the rats arrived in bulk, whole, unskinned and frozen: